Photos emerged online overnight that allegedly reveal the design of Fitbit's first "true" smartwatch, rumors of which we covered last month. The images were originally published by Yahoo Finance and appear to show that the company's upcoming Apple Watch rival looks very similar to the $150 Fitbit Blaze fitness watch, which has been on sale since early 2016.
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The watch's square face, physical buttons, and flexible elastomer wristband closely resemble the company's Blaze. Several Fitbit employees who saw the design are said to have complained about it, according to previous reports.
Specifications of the smartwatch, which is said to be codenamed "Higgs" internally, include a color display with 1,000 nits of brightness similar to the Apple Watch Series 2, built-in GPS, heart-rate monitoring, a full-fledged app store, contactless payments, storage for music, Pandora support, and four days of battery life. The $300 watch was previously thought to have an aluminum unibody design that supports swappable watch bands.
The smartwatch was initially said to be launching this spring, but technical problems have reportedly plagued the product and the company is now thought to be aiming for a fall release.
Fitbit is also rumored to be releasing a pair of Bluetooth earbuds similar in design to Apple's BeatsX buds. Codenamed "Parkside" internally, the $150 wireless earbuds will hang around the neck and be marketed as an accessory for the forthcoming smartwatch.
A lot is riding on the success of Fitbit's upcoming products, after the company faced one of its "largest declines ever" in the fourth quarter of 2016, which resulted in layoffs of about 6 percent of its staff. Although the company remained above Apple Watch in the number of units shipped, it has gradually been losing market share to rivals Apple and Xiaomi.
Top Rated Comments
(View all)Watch looks slim and beautiful, it will be a tough fight for apple watch
What? It looks terrible...Why are the bezels so thick?? Why did they put "Fitbit" right there on the front under the screen? It won't be much cheaper than the Apple Watch, and they are having trouble getting the GPS and waterproofing right, so they're going to be a year behind on that as well. Good luck to them, but this looks awful, and does not seem like a comparable option to the Apple Watch at all.The problem is not even related to how it looks or what it can offer. The problem is with the waterproofing.
I think the issue with waterproofing is also the warranty aspect which I would imagine would cost quite a bit.I still can't understand how is it possible that a company like fitbit can't make waterproof stuff.
The only reason why I still didn't buy a fitbit to upgrade my old one, was simply because of that. I don't want to constantly worry about rain, or a splash of water whenever I wash my hands. Or even forgetting to take it out before taking a shower.
Fitbit Blaze is really well made and honestly, they should just make another blaze but using metal like the Alta or Charge HR2 instead of the plastic used at the moment.
It would be a foolish CEO of any company to just burn money for no reason for a product with absolutely no chance to recoup even a tiny fraction of its production costs.